Alarming climate models questionable

As a matter of physics, CO2 cannot cause catastrophic global warming. The International Panel on Climate Change says that for a doubling of CO2 the temperature will increase by 1.2 degrees: "If the amount of carbon dioxide were doubled instantaneously, with everything else remaining the same ... the temperature of the surface-troposphere system would have to increase by 1.2 degrees Centigrade."

And according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration website, CO2 concentrations have increased by an average of 0.6% per year for the last 50 years, meaning a doubling would take 120 years. That's 1/100th of a degree per year on average caused directly by CO2. Does 1/100th of a degree per year sound like an existential threat to you? Does 1/100th of a degree per year justify taxing carbon?

The larger temperature increases you hear about are from very complex climate models. How accurate are models? Arguably the most famous modeler of the last 50 years, Dr. George Box of the University of Wisconsin, stated succinctly, "All models are wrong, some models are useful."

So, we know climate models are wrong, the only question is how useful are they? Everyone knows that short-term climate models called local weather forecasting, are not extremely accurate. Those climate models are for days or weeks in advance and typically only cover a small area.

IPCC models are for 100 years and cover the entire earth's surface, land and oceans. That's more than a magnitude of increased complexity. We must remember that model outputs are not facts, they are guesses/maybes. Yesterday and backward in time are facts/data, today and forward in time are models/guesses. Politically motivated people like to publicly confuse the two because it benefits their narrative.

Bill Zettler

Grayslake